Arsenal can follow Chelsea to Champions League glory

The Xmas is over and the festive time is at full swing, but here at Arsenal we are waiting with bated breath for the transfer window to open. And after any movements it’ll lead us to the coveted champion’s league battles. I, as a Gunner would definitely hope that we get some much needed reinforcements this winter. But we fully trust Le Prof to not invest heavily on world Football’s 2nd shifting stop.

To set expectations realistically, very few of us would expect to get past Bayern Munich in the play offs. However wishful it might be, deep inside we all would hope for some more CL matches to watch wearing the Red and White beside the German Tour. And the only team crossing our minds is not far enough from Emirates. Yes it is our North London neighbor, whose last year’s heroics hit our thoughts every time we think about our chances in the Champion’s League. And the right question to ask is can we pull off a Chelsea this year?

On paper if you examine the team then there is nothing much to write home about. But we will have a clear idea if we break it down piece by pieces and take note of all the aspects.

First and foremost we lack a prolific striker. Although Podolski, Giroud and Walcott (no offence, excluding Chamakh) are premier Forwards but Chelsea had Drogba and Torres (even though he was out of form, but he still is a world class player). It wouldn’t be controversial if I dare say that he single handedly pull them out of holes multiple times. He was the Talismanic presence every team wish for.

And yes they did have an astute leader in Terry, you love him or you hate him but we can’t deny the fact that he is one of the top man to carry a team. Ok no Terry in finals, no problem, they had Lampard, who is as good, if not better. He was vocal and as always, a fighter. TV5 was the best man to take over from RvP and he is equally talented but he is still learning his trade.

Chelsea had a very evenly balanced back Four with right amount of Youth, Experience, Pace and Resilience. Cole, Cahill, Ivanović and Luiz were at the top of their game. We do have a battle hardened defence line consisting the likes of TV5, Mertesacker, Sagna, Koscielny and very impressive Gibbs and Jenkinson. And Szczęsny at the Gates is a very able Keeper of the Goal.

Midfield is the region where we are superior to them. The Skills, Efficiency and the Talent of our midfield are capable enough to take us to places, provided there is no injury concern. One of the best attributes of us is our goal scoring exploits. Any of Rosický, Arteta, Wilshere, Chamberlain, Cazorla and Ramsey is competent enough to make and score their own goals.

So please don’t lose heart and cheer up, we do have a decent team to take us to champion’s league glory. And we would keep our fingers crossed hoping for some inputs during this transfer season.

37 thoughts on “Arsenal can follow Chelsea to Champions League glory”

what absolute tripe , you must be bored out of your mind dear writer to come up with something like this . we all love to be optimistic but come on , arsenal win the champions league this season with a crocked manager and a team who do not believe in themsleves , yeah right , the similarities between ourselves and chelsea are spooky, lol .

Chelsea had tactics, plan B, ambitious coach and world class players on the bench. it is a huge difference having torres coming on as a sub and having gervinho coming as such.
it pains me to say it but Bayern will gut us

Arsene Wenger’s philosophy of selling his best players and replacing with them with inferior ones is the one reason we will not win the champions league, premier league or FA cup for that matter. I have shifted from the AKB (Wenger Knows Best) to WOB (Wenger Out Brigade). Love Arsenal Hate Kroenke & Co.

If Wenger was a clever guy, which obviously he is not. He would push Gibbs as a winger and sign a left back. Gibbs has been doing very well on the left side getting in those crosses plus he can track back and help out in defense. He can then sign a DM and half of his problems would be solved.
Oh and he needs to work on defending the back post in training as we keep getting caught out!!!

DREAM DREAM DREAMMMMMMMMME SON …WE ARE IN THE FINAL OF THE CHAMPION LEAGUE….2 NIL UP AGAINST BARCELONA WITH 30 SEC TO GO AFTER 5 MNS OF ADDED TIME…IT S A MATTER OF SECONDS BEFORE WE LIFT IT DREAM DREAM MY SON DREAAAAAAM

Just need a classy striker,a defensive midflder and may b an LB or GK or Winger for bloody backups. Plz mr.wenger use ur f**king money nd buy some f**king class players. Just do it now i mean right now.

not buying good players and selling stars is actually wenger’s fault (not board)

he made this socialist pay structure. because of that many good players like nasri, cashley clichy have left… and he gets paid the best in England and deadwoods keep getting astronomical wages and dont leave
quality players want quality money too. but arsen never gives any player wages above his own. he keeps ranting about players being greedy but what about his own wage?

his socialist idea has seen this mediocre arsenal side have wages more than 50m than spuds. wtf?

each year we could have 50m for transfers, etc but here is this club dictator who has just lost his mind

Striker cdm lb rb and a creative midfielder are the players we have to go for. But not any players it must be world class players. If we don’t sign there is no chance we will beat bayern let alone win the champions league

This is actually an opportunity for walcott to be a game changer here as if we do plan to do a chelsea, we will need to defend like s**t and play on the break, if we catch them on the break walcott has too much pace to be caught by the few men back and if given space he can finish. Still, I’m not optimistic about passing bayern but I think there is a small chance.

If 2006 Arsenal Team Can’t win CL then This team Stands No chance. Unless Some Miracle Happens !!!
The Arsenal Standard has Dropped , no one consider us as a Threat or Rival .
WE BADLY NEED A CHANGE !!

If we don’t make quality transfer decisions, we should just kiss every competition goodbye, and bye bye CL next year.
Imagine getting beat up by the likes of Bradford, Swans and Canaries…and you want to win the CL. LOL

Bob,
You have succedded in showing us that you don’t know Bayern a jot! Bayern have very good strikers in Mario Gomes and Mario Mandzukic, very good and always score lots of goals. However their biggest strength is the midfield, the one you are deriding. Muller, Robben, Ribery and even Kroos score lots of goals. So come February its not about shutting down Gomes or Mandzukic, but every Arsenal player must be on the top of their game.
Their defence is also good, Alaba (plays left back) and Lahm are very good going forward, BUT, their defence has weaknesses.
1. Alaba is very much like Gibbs, very dangerous when going forward, but not yet technically astute as a defender. A really fast player like Theo can skin him.\
2. Holger Badstuber plays central defence, but has his own lapses of concentration. If he doesn’t play, Boateng will. Now, Boateng reads the game very well, but what both lack is pace, and they both don’t relish physical play very much. So either of Giroud or Theo can still thrive.
3. Lastly, (and thats where the Swansea game was good for us), Bayern thrives on posession of the ball. If you can possess too, and use a little bit of pace from start to finish, you’re bound to win. If we do not harass them, as we played at Southampton, you might very well see them scoring double figures against us.
NB: If you see Arteta, Carzola and Wilshire manning our midfield against Bayern, then you know we will lose! But if you see Diaby or even Rosisky a part of that midfield, then we will hurt them, a lot.

Very funny article, it should start as “first get a new manager”, ignore it all u can but its our most important problem, but it doesn’t have to be wenger out, wenger wake up is also a good idea, he is definitely facing some personal issues

Its hard to dream of a win with the way that we’re playing all season, liv match we did look good but thinking back on it, liv had so many problems and were destroyed by w brom not long before.

Theres no way in a million years that we can do a che with this set of players, we would need our most famous of defences along with a pick of any of our old first team strikers. Che won that final playing like our old one nil to the Arsenal.

Over two legs especially its difficult to see us progress, lets just hope Bayern have a bit of a mare in the first leg making it most difficult for themselves.

I would love if Walcott would demand the ball more and just run at defences, something he should have done against sou. I know he’ll never be an Henry but if he got himself a real just hate to lose mentality he would be demanding the ball and leaving players for dead, pitty.

stop all the day dreaming nonsense.
i really like this site but sometimes its full of shit.
we gonna win champions league!…..no we aint.
we gonna win fa cup!…..not on yesterdays performance.
we gonna spend 50 mil in jan!…..you must no thats never gonna happen.
stop all this jibba jabba and give us some hard facts.

Sorry, but you’re living in a dream world. The (invincible) team that should’ve won it, didn’t, and this current crop is without doubt Wengers worse side during his reign. They’re not winning anything anytime soon let alone the hardest trophy to win and the one we never have.

Call me a pessimist, but after years of watching my club get worse I’m just being realistic. Blind faith is for morons.

This season I have watched Bayern lose on three ocassions.But on two ocassions, both teams had two things in common.
1. Borussia G’ladbach and Hleb’s team both played on the counter attack.
2. They harassed Bayern all over the pitch, when it failed they packed the area around their box.
Therefore, i think Arsenal has a 30% chance of progressing. We could increase the chances if Arsene can variate the midfield. So if a Diaby-like player came in, then our chances would improve a bit.

I’m sorry but I disagree strongly with this article and the superficial look at Chelsea’s squad and then comparing it to our squad is where this article went wrong.

1. Chelsea had a defensive midfielder – People often slate John Obi Mikel as a bad DM but for the CL final he was immense. Alongside him was Lampard, put those two together and you have a relatively solid pivot in the 4 2 3 1 formation.

2. Chelsea had a solid back 4 – Ashley Cole, Cahill, Luiz and Ivnovic. On his day very few players if any can get past Cole, one of the few players that has successfully nullified CR7 and he pretty much did the same to Ribery. Ivanovic is not as fast as most RBs however he has undeniable quality and made things very difficult for Robben, because Chelsea were defending so much his pace was never an issue. Luiz – Cahill are very similar in attributes to Kos and TV5 however TV5 retreats in big matches. Some might point to Luiz’s defensive lapses and compare it to Kos’s but the difference is spirit when Luiz makes a mistake he tries to make up for it. If you get past Luiz he is going to chase you down whereas Kos will turn around and look as if “what just happened?” and I don’t think anyone realizes both of Chelsea’s CBs were injured.

3. Chelsea had leaders – Drogba, Lampard, Cole, Terry. All seasoned veterans with years more experience than any other player on our team. Drogba single handedly put Chelsea on his back and pulled them forward at times. Could you really see Walcott doing the same? Or anyone on the team for that matter.

Last but not least, Chelsea had luck.
Some might say well how come we can’t have that? I’m not talking about simple strokes of fortune, I’m talking about putting yourself in the right positions, constantly fighting and then out of nowhere something happens. When Chelsea went down in the final to Muller’s goal everyone thought they were out but what happened, they fought till the end and they got lucky, what happened? They ended up winning on penalties. Semi Finals in Barcelona, they fought, harassed Messi and everyone else, what happened? They got 2 goals from counter attacks out of nowhere. Ramires gets a goal from nowhere and Torres gets one from nowhere. Both goals that came not from tactical superiority or brilliance, but came from Chelsea fighting and creating their own luck. I’m sorry to say but now, when the chips are down no one on the Arsenal squad is willing to do that save Wishere.
Chelsea had the right mix of youth and experience but all were quality.

The problem with our squad at the moment is that we are all flair and no spine, no one on our teams wants to man up and fight. We HAD the experience but we sold it. The team would have been a force to be reckoned with had we kept RVP, Fabregas, Song, Clichy and Nasri. Experience is invaluable!!!! especially to cup matches and we’ve seen it time and time again. Matches we could have won we ended up losing or drawing, not from technical brilliance or overall a better team, but from Arsenal withering. Here are some to name a few, Swansea, United, Chelsea, Swansea again, Bradford! all matches we lost from Arsenal just melting in the face of adversity.

Can we win it? Yes….

Will we win it…I doubt it.

Solutions? DM, Striker and generally more midfield players. Santi, Wilshere and Arteta will be run into the ground if they keep playing like this. These signings bolstered by the return and hopefully fit Diaby and maybe with some fight and more than our fair share of luck and Arsenal can win it.

But the cheapest thing of all, the one that requires no money whatsoever is what Arsenal need most…
Fighting Spirit.